Lilith modern space craft don't use an oil propulsion system. The fuel used is a mixture of liquid hydrogen, oxygen, hydrazine, monomethylhydrazine, and nitrogen tetroxide (I checked the NASA website). What holds space exploration back is purely down to the costs of the manufacture of the spacecrafts,technology, fuel etc. I do think there is life somewhere in the universe it's highly unlikely to have visited here though.

Thanks for the info Scot although nowadays I guess it's a moot point since NASA is gone. Hope the same fuel is used across the board. Or perhaps better fuel. I had the expectation that some parts of it used fossil fuels but am perfectly glad to be wrong.

I'm not a non believer, I believe in the possibility of anything. I just don't let the actuality of something be determined by a 3rd party.

You may well be right that some part of it is taken from fossil fuels to be honest i wouldnt be surprised if it was. I didnt look that thoroughly at how the chemicals that make the fuel are sourced. We do rely too heavily on fossil fuels instead of funding wars for the last scraps of oil the money should be used in the research of alternative fuels.
Ive went a bit off topic with this post so i will bring it back to aliens by saying our reliance on fossil fuels is a conspiracy put in place by the alien overlords who secretly run the world .

(14-06-2011 09:00 PM)Cube Wrote: It seems improbable [perhaps irresponsible?] to say that there are no other forms of life out there. The numbers are stacked in favor of life. Even if there were only 1 'earth' per galaxy. Tonnes of life. Even if only 1% of those were able to get off their planet and spread throughout their local stars and perhaps their galaxy. Tonnes of life.

With the discovery of 2/3 more stars this past spring, (thus with the realization that there are somewhere around 600 sextillion stars), the solution to the Drake equation - (http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Top...ion.html), (you can calculate it for yourself at this site, and enter your own equation values), becomes "astronomical", (pun intended)
It is a probable certainty. We are SO very early in our evolutionary development, (but soon to go parabolic...see Kurzweil's "The Sigularity is Near"), as our intelligence becomes, (more) biological + machine based) that any advanced civilization would not have much interest in us thus far. But as we develop self-evolving robotic intelligence systems, (which for example you may have just begun to tap by using the gmail "cloud" functions to extend your searchable memorory), which will plug into the network, and self learn and self evolve instantly, as well as from all the other robot-beings on the network, in the next few decades, both we and they will have more interest in each other.

Insufferable know-it-all.
Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music - Friedrich Nietzsche

jmick Wrote:
How many people on here think the space shuttle, with its 30 year old technology, is really our space program?

I do not understand your question.

I think the question refers to maybe a secret space program the government doesn`t tell everyone about. Which of course there is one, that`s how they test new technology before showing everyone, just in case it fails miserably. Where does everyone think all the tax money goes.

"I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments." -Jim Morrison